Post traumatic labour…

The First Step as a Mummy: Breastfeeding After Trauma
Motherhood did not begin for me with calm music, soft lights, or quiet breaths.
It began with fear.
When my waters broke, I believed I was finally stepping into the moment I had prepared for so carefully. I had studied, breathed, trusted my body, trusted the process. I thought I was safe. Instead, I was sent home.
What followed was not part of any plan.
Labour came fast. Violent. Unstoppable. There was no time to return. No room. No midwife. No reassurance. My husband, Nalen, delivered our daughter, Valentina, in a car park. Between shock and instinct, he became everything I needed in that moment.
I remember the cold.
I remember the panic.
I remember thinking, this is not how it was supposed to be.
I did not get the golden hour.
I did not get immediate skin-to-skin.
I did not get to hold my baby and breathe her in while the world stood still.
That loss stays with me.
When it came time to breastfeed, my body was present, but my soul was still somewhere else. Still replaying what had happened. Still trying to understand how something so life-changing could unfold so brutally fast.
Breastfeeding did not come naturally to me. Not because I didn’t love my baby, but because trauma had already entered the room.
My body shut down. My emotions disconnected. And instead of holding my baby at my breast, I found myself attached to a machine.
I pump. Not because I chose this journey, but because it was the only way I could give my baby my milk. The only way I could still feel useful when my body refused to cooperate the way I had imagined.
There is grief in pumping.
Grief in hearing a machine instead of your baby’s breath.
Grief in watching bottles fill instead of feeling a latch.
And there is guilt too. A quiet, heavy guilt that sits in your chest when bonding doesn’t feel instant, when skin-to-skin feels foreign, when breastfeeding feels like another reminder of what was taken from you.
It was incredibly hard for me to connect. To breastfeeding. To skin-to-skin. To myself as a mother. I was shocked. And in many ways, I still am.
No one prepares you for this side of motherhood. No one tells you that trauma can delay bonding. That love can exist without immediate connection. That feeding your baby can feel like survival rather than bliss.
So I am writing this for the mothers who are silent.
For the ones who cry while pumping at 3am.
For the ones who didn’t get the birth they dreamed of.
For the ones whose bodies remembered fear before tenderness.
You are not broken.
You did not fail.
Your motherhood is still real.
Sometimes love doesn’t arrive softly. Sometimes it fights its way in.
This is my truth. I did not plan this beginning. But I am still here. Still feeding my baby. Still healing. Still becoming her mother, day by day.
This is only the first step of my maternity journey.
And it is the hardest one I have ever taken.
🤍.